WASHINGTON – NATO will insist its troops be “in charge” of any peacekeeping force sent to Kosovo as part of a deal to end the bombing of Yugoslavia, Defense Secretary William Cohen said yesterday.

But President Clinton’s spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said it is “correct” that NATO could cut a deal that leaves Kosovo as part of Serbia even though Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic is now an indicted war criminal.

Lockhart insisted the million-plus refugee Kosovars would feel safe returning home with a war criminal running the country “because they would be returning home with autonomy and with security.”

The United States will contribute about 7,500 troops or 15 percent of the total peacekeeping force of 50,000 that NATO military leaders discussed yesterday in Brussels, the Pentagon said.

That news came as Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finland’s President Martti Ahtisaari are due in Belgrade today for more talks.

Russia is calling for a halt in NATO bombing to help diplomacy, but Cohen ruled that out, saying, “A pause would only serve Milosevic’s interests.”

In Yugoslavia’s capital of Belgrade, a senior official accused NATO of trying to spoil hopes for a diplomatic settlement by intensifying bombing on the eve of today’s talks.

Every time a deal seems close, there is “an intensification of the bombing that turns these diplomatic efforts useless,” said Goran Matic, a Yugoslav minister believed close to Milosevic.

Clinton may be more specific about U.S. troops in Kosovo today when he talks about Kosovo in a commencement speech at the Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado Springs, White House aides said.

Cohen insisted the troops will go in only as peacekeepers and won’t be sent into ground combat to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo and stop the ethnic cleansing and atrocities against ethnic Albanians.

Over the past few days, Milosevic has sent hints that he’s willing to accept U.N. peacekeepers and possibly a few NATO troops – but not troops from NATO countries taking part in the U.S.-led air war.

But Cohen said NATO must be “at the core” of peacekeeping, adding that means “there must be a command-and-control structure that is NATO’s in charge of any peacekeeping operation.”

U.S. officials say lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers would be all but powerless to stop Serb atrocities against the Kosovars.

NATO jets yesterday goofed over northern Albania and accidentally bombed government bunkers, injuring a Kosovo refugee in an area where border sorties are being flown in support of ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

The bombs narrowly missed a group of foreign journalists covering the border fighting just days after a journalists’ convoy was bombed in Kosovo, killing a driver/translator and lightly injuring two reporters.

Reports from the scene said at least seven bombs were dropped as far as 2 miles inside Albania and witnesses told of villagers fleeing in panic, with one old man holding up his hands in apparent shock and disbelief.